We stood glaring at each other, raw wounds exposed, unrelenting. I couldn’t bring myself to contradict her. Why couldn’t she have just hugged me and told me she was sorry? Why couldn’t she just say, “I love you Anna”? Why was she always trying to preach to me about life’s harsh lessons, when she was dishing out enough of them as it was?
“Take out the trash and then go to your room,” she said at last, and I couldn’t tell who had won the argument. Like most relationship-defining fights, we had both lost something important.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Carly Cardwell was a hard woman to turn down. When she’d called to invite me to spend the day at her parents’ lake house, I’d had a hundred reasons to say no, not the least of which was that I’d finally started my job hunt in earnest. (Which was code for “browsing through the classified ads” instead of simply freaking out about my finances: no money to chip in for my grandparents’ bills; no money for a security deposit on a place of our own, much less steady rent; no money for school supplies or new clothes for David.) But as I sat in front of my grandparents’ ancient computer, scrolling through postings seeking receptionists, customer service reps, sales associates, office managers, wait staff, and daycare teachers, all with unbelievably high expectations and even more unbelievably low pay, I started to feel more and more discouraged.
“Who else is going to be there?” I asked her, remembering the Tims and Heathers at her engagement party. I held my cell phone between my ear and shoulder as I clicked on an ad for an elementary school art teacher. Unfortunately, a Bachelor’s degree and a state teaching license were required. Boo.
“Just you, lovely,” Carly said. “I thought we could catch up. Maybe take the pontoon boat out for a spin.”
“Your dad still lets you drive that thing after you crashed it into your neighbor’s dock?” I teased.
“Of course,” she scoffed. “It doesn’t hurt that my parents are divorced now, and my mom got to keep the house and the boats. She spends most of her time with her boyfriend in Port Ambrose anyway, so Sam and I come out here a ton in the summer. What do you say?”
My desire to escape—from the stifling house, from the demands of my tedious life, from David’s sullen mood, and from his dinosaurs who weren’t really there but somehow were and oh, God, what was that about, anyway?—was physically overwhelming. I could almost feel the cool lake water lapping against my skin as I floated in an inner tube. I knew Duffy would probably be willing to watch David for the rest of the day and wouldn’t begrudge me a little “girl time” as long as I didn’t come home too late or show up in Jamie Presswood’s truck.
When I parked in the small parking area above the Cardwells’ house, I was already perspiring through the halter top and jean shorts I’d layered over my bikini. The Dodge Caravan’s AC was now officially out of commission. I passed the familiar, ugly big-mouthed bass mailbox before descending the steep stone steps that led to the house. Peeking in the screened-in side porch, I couldn’t see or hear Carly, so I climbed down another flight of narrower stone steps that led to the lake. The pleasantly musty smell of lake water rose up to greet me. Each step I took felt like I was traveling back in time to my high school days. There was the trampoline where Carly, Libby O’Mallon, and I had sprawled out on our backs and exchanged secrets about boys. The bonfire pit. The dove-gray, sparkling water where I had first gone skinny-dipping. And Carly herself, looking sixteen again in a sexy black bikini, her skin as smooth and brown as a chestnut.
She gave me an energetic wave from the dock. “Hey! I packed a cooler full of bottled water and wine coolers, and I have the perfect place in mind for us to drop anchor and swim. Ready to cruise?” She jammed a baseball cap over her springy hair and swung open the boat’s gate for me.
Carly was a more competent captain than I remembered, and I didn’t fear for anyone’s dock this time. She piloted the pontoon boat slowly and precisely around the perimeter of the lake, pointing out Sam’s and her dream house, asking all about David (I left out the part about the dinosaurs), and filling me in on their plans for their May wedding. We found an eighties music station on the radio and sang along to Bananarama, the Go-Go’s, and the Bangles. I drank one wine cooler, promising myself I would switch to water next.
“Where’s Libby these days?” I asked, relaxing against the bank of sun-warmed vinyl seats.
“San Francisco.” Carly cut the engine as we entered a small cove. The pontoon boat glided into a private area where there were no houses and marsh grass grew in tall bunches. “She’s with a ballet company there.”
“Really?” Out of the three of us, Libby had always seemed the least ambitious. And yet there she was, and here we were.
Carly raised her eyebrow as if she was totally on the same page as me. “I know. I’m super happy for her, though. If I ever get out to California, I’m supposed to call her, and she’ll get me free tickets to a performance.” She walked to the back of the boat to throw out the anchor. “Let’s see. Who else that you know is still in the area? Oh. Well, you probably already know this because he lives next door to you, but Jamie Presswood is back.”
I nodded quickly. “Yeah, I know. I saw him at your party.” Something stopped me from telling her about Colin, the wine coolers, and Jamie driving me home. Maybe Sam had already told her, or she’d seen Jamie come to pick up my minivan the next morning. Carly was many things, but judgmental was not one of them. “He mows my grandparents’ lawn, so he’s out there weekly. And he actually gave me something the other day from when we were kids.”
“Oh yeah?” She twisted off her water bottle cap and took a swig. “I’m surprised he’ll talk to you. It took him a while to warm up to me, and only then because Sam and Marshall persuaded him. We were such bitches to him in high school, weren’t we?”
I bit my lip as I remembered how dismissive I’d been of Jamie my sophomore year. The weekend before I started at William Payne, Duffy and Winston had invited him over to join us for dinner. We’d spent the whole night reminiscing about our childhood summers together, sitting so close our bare legs touched. It had been Jamie’s first year at William Payne, too, as a freshman, but school had already been in session for a month, so he had tried to prepare me and give me lots of practical advice. He’d eased my anxiety, and since we had the same lunch period, he even promised to sit with me at lunch, so I wouldn’t run the risk of eating alone. But on the big day, I immediately met Carly and Libby in my first period class, who tucked me under their wings like a baby bird. Not only did I not sit with Jamie for lunch that day, I also went so far as to pretend I didn’t even know him, and we’d coldly avoided each other the rest of the year, both at home and at school. The awful memory made my cheeks burn.
“Me more so than you,” I said. “Jamie and I had been best friends, and then I just dropped him.”
“We were all pretty horrible. Evil teenage brain syndrome, I call it, because what else would explain being so vicious to such a nice kid? Remember how you dared me to ask him to homecoming? We had this whole elaborate idea for how to dump him the day before the dance. But he wouldn’t even say yes because you and Libby were laughing so hard that he knew all along it was a prank.” Carly lowered herself to the aluminum edge of the boat and dangled her legs into the water. She took off her cap and shook out her hair. “But the joke was on us because he really grew into one fine specimen of a man, didn’t he?”
“I guess so. He’s not really my type.” I slipped off my halter top and shorts and joined Carly on the back deck. The water felt warm and soothing on my toes and calves.
“That’s right. You always had a thing for the bad boys, didn’t you?” She dipped her fingers in the water and sent a playful splash my way. “Speaking of which, I wonder where Zack Winslow is these days. Prison, perhaps?”
“Probably.” I splashed her back. “By my grandmother’s standards, Jamie is a bad boy.”
“By Salsburg standards, sure.” Carly stretched her arms out in front of her, press
ed her palms together, leaned forward, and dove into the water. I followed suit.
Beneath the top foot of clear water where the sunlight had warmed it, the lake was crisply cold and otherworldly. Darting fish, weeds undulating like mermaid hair, alternating patches of sunlight and shadow. I would take a lake over a chlorinated pool any day. There was no pressure to swim laps in a lake; just floating or treading water was perfectly acceptable. Even the flecks of silt and sand that I would find in my swimsuit afterward made me feel truly organic, a part of the ecosystem.
When I emerged, I slicked my hair back out of my eyes. Carly was breast-stroking toward a clump of fragile-looking lily pads.
“Do you think the drug rumors about him are true?” I asked. Since her fiancé was friends with Marshall and Jamie, she probably had inside information about him.
“Beats me. Probably not, but at the heart of every rumor is always a kernel of truth. Why don’t you ask him?” She paddled around to face me. “You seem awfully interested in Jamie all of a sudden. Have you dated anyone since Patrick?”
“It’s not like that. I’m just curious. I’ve known the guy since he was six! And no, I haven’t dated anyone—at least seriously—since Patrick. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m a single mother of a four-year-old.”
We swam lazily around the cove, and I brought her up to speed about my injunction against Patrick, which would be expiring in October, and how I was deeply disturbed by what that would mean for me and David. I knew that it was one of my major motives in escaping to Salsburg and cloistering myself for a time.
Climbing back into the boat, we let the sun dry us off. We talked about her job at Ruby’s Diner and how soul-crushing she found it to bake walnut brownies every day and instead wished she could experiment with rainbow-colored macarons and crème brûlée. She asked me about my art, and I admitted I hadn’t done a single oil pastel since David was six months old and that I, too, would be reentering the world of dream-crushing jobs soon. Then she pulled up the anchor and started motoring back to shore.
When she guided the boat back into its slip, we noticed a small fire smoking in the pit up the hill. “Sam must be here,” she said, securing the pontoon boat to the dock with a nylon rope. “Do you want to join us for dinner? In the summer, my mom’s house is always stocked with brats, hotdogs, and s’mores fixings.”
Suddenly I wanted nothing more than to have David with me. The boat ride, the bonfire, roasting marshmallows, he would have loved it all. It was something I wrestled with daily: craving time to myself, time with other adults, and then when I finally stole a few hours away from him, I desperately missed his wide, excited eyes and warm, heavy body, perpetually in some kind of contact with mine. I worried I was missing something important and fleeting that couldn’t be reclaimed.
I was also torn between feeling prudent and reckless about leaving David with someone who couldn’t see his dinosaurs. This was the way the world worked for 99.99% of parents, I reasoned. Imagination was a private, mental creation by definition, and it was merely a fluke that I could see the images David was projecting. If anything, my perceiving and reacting to his dinosaurs was maybe making him more susceptible. Still I couldn’t help feeling like I was leaving my child alone with a particularly dangerous breed of dog. A breed that seemed loyal and safe one minute but might rip someone’s face off the next.
I stepped into my jean shorts and buttoned them up. “Thanks,” I said. “I’d like to, but I probably should be getting home soon.” I’d told Duffy I didn’t know if I’d be home for dinner but that I’d definitely be back in time to tuck David in and tell him a story. The sun was still gleaming on the lake’s surface, misleadingly making it look like only three or four o’clock, when I knew it was probably closer to six or seven.
Boyish whoops carried down the hillside to us, and three male figures appeared on the stone steps, too far away to identify.
“Oh, I guess he brought friends, too,” Carly said, craning her neck to make them out. One of them let out a low wolf whistle when he spotted us. “What a bunch of goons.”
The first guy was scrawny and red-haired—Marshall Gehring, I remembered. Jamie’s friend. Next came Sam, lugging a case of beer. And behind him—no, it couldn’t be. Messy blond hair and broad shoulders under a sky-blue soccer jersey. I wanted to positively die. Colin Bentley, my misguided conquest.
I yanked my halter top over my head and retied it. My bikini wasn’t totally dry yet, and I hoped I wouldn’t have wet booby circles through my shirt. “Thanks for having me over. This was just what I needed, but it’s almost David’s bedtime. And probably mine too, after all the sun we got today.” I yawned as if to prove my point.
Carly looped her arm around my waist as we walked toward the guys. “Well, let’s do it again sometime then. I’m so glad you’re back in the area. I know it’s selfish of me to say, but I really hope you’ll stick around.”
“Hey!” Sam bent down to Carly’s tiny height and kissed her. “I tried calling to warn you, but you know how terrible cell phone reception is out here. We were in the mood for a bonfire and some night fishing.” He set the case of beer down and straightened up. “Anna! So good to see you again! I don’t know if you remember my friends from the party, Marshall and Colin.”
I smiled noncommittally. Colin was sizing me up as if he couldn’t decide whether to write me off as a lost cause or give it another crack. I hadn’t just been wearing my drunk goggles; he really was gorgeous in a Burberry model kind of way. Maybe a bit too pretty for my liking. Carly was right about my preference in men; bad boys were my downfall.
“You’re both staying, right?” Sam asked. Marshall added another log to the fire, and Colin righted a fallen lawn chair.
“I’ll help you with the brats, babe, and then leave you to your guy time. Anna was actually just taking off,” Carly rescued me, God love her. “I held her captive on the pontoon boat all afternoon, and we’re both pretty beat.”
“Bummer,” Colin said, his pearly gray eyes sparkling like the sunlit lake.
“Yeah,” Sam agreed. “Well, next time then.”
Carly and I parted ways with a hug at the top of the first flight of steps, the lower entrance to the house. She went inside to beer boil some brats, and I continued to climb the steps that would take me back up to the road where I’d parked my minivan. I passed the screened-in porch, turned the corner, and almost planted my face directly in Jamie Presswood’s chest. He smelled like cedar shavings and dried sweat.
“Ah!” I backed up quickly. “What are you doing here?”
“Sam invited me.” He gestured to the fishing pole he was carrying at his side. “What are you doing here?”
“Carly invited me.” I glanced back at the screened-in porch, almost expecting her curly head to pop up at any minute. She’d seemed so mindful of my questions about Jamie earlier. Was this some kind of a set-up? If it was, both Carly and Sam were playing it awfully cool. “I was just leaving though.”
Jamie made as if to shoulder past me without another word. I remembered what Carly had said. I’m surprised he’ll talk to you. We were such bitches to him in high school. I wished I could go back in time, erase my bad behavior, and we could be the friends who had once caught fireflies for their wish-granting abilities and picnicked by the river together, again.
“I looked through the sketchbook,” I said. “It brought back some good memories. Thanks again.”
He raised one shoulder and let it drop. “It was yours. I was just returning it.”
“I still can’t believe you had it after all these years. I mean, that it wasn’t thrown away.” I hooked my car keys around my pointer finger and jingled them.
Was I imagining it, or did Jamie’s cheeks pinken? “My mom’s a packrat,” he said. “She kept everything I so much as wiped my nose on as a kid. It’s all sorted in boxes and labeled by year in the attic. When you mentioned that summer, I knew where to look.”
I leaned against the stone stairwell. “I s
till don’t remember much about her—my imaginary friend. It’s like I completely blotted out her memory. But I’ve been thinking about the ‘picnics’ you and I used to have by the river. Do you remember? You would steal a tin of butter cookies from your mom, and I would pack a cooler full of Cokes and fruit roll-ups and freezy pops. Of course, the freezy pops would always melt by the time we got there.”
Jamie’s posture noticeably relaxed. “I’d forgotten about that. You know what I remember? The carnival at the Firemen’s Picnic. Remember how my mom or Duffy would take us for a few hours during the day and buy us a couple of hot dogs and some tickets for the rides? Then later that night—it was probably only 9:00, but it felt like it was midnight—Winston would take us again, so he could buy himself a funnel cake without your grandmother knowing. He’d give us ten bucks each to spend however we wanted. He just let us run off. We just had to meet him by the gate at a certain time, and that was it. I always wanted to play the ring toss game and win one of those gigantic stuffed animals, and you always wanted to—”
“Ride the Ferris wheel,” I finished eagerly. It was thrilling hearing him speak more than one sentence at a time. His tumble of words reminded me of how open and earnest he’d been when he was fifteen. Before he’d stopped speaking to me, that is.
I’d only vaguely recalled those late-night, unsupervised visits to the carnival, but as soon as Jamie described it, I could almost smell the fried dough and powdered sugar of Winston’s forbidden funnel cake. I could feel the night breeze on my feverish cheeks as we rode the Ferris wheel to the top for the hundredth time. I could see Jamie’s shoulders hunched in disappointment as he missed the three required bottles and the grand prize again. And there was something else. A girl with a black pageboy brushing against my arm: “Let’s go on the Ferris wheel again, Anna. It’s so magical! You can see the whole town from up there! The whole world, practically.”
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